PR2 robot learns to scoop poop

Everything cool in technology eventually becomes mundane. I think history shall record that robots, once the stuff of science fiction and fantasy, crossed this threshold when they began picking poop off the floor.

Ben Cohen and friends at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP lab recently took the wraps off this awesome new technology, named POOP SCOOP (Perception of Offensive Products and Sensorized Control of Object Pickup). Hello, Ig Nobel prize.

Shown off at IROS 2011 in San Francisco, the $400,000 poop picker-upper IDs turds based on their color against a uniform green field. It then autonomously navigates to the spot and de… [Read more]